Dr. Adrián Gonzalo Sanchez

About me

I am highly interested in genetics, chromosome biology and evolution. I aim to contribute to these fields through the study of the biological process of meiosis: a specialized cell division that allocates the genetic material into the precursors of sperms, ovules or plant pollens to enable fertilization in organisms with sexual reproduction.

More precisely, I have specialized my career during my MSc (at Universidad Complutense in Madrid, Spain), PhD at (INRA-IJPB in Versailles, France) and Post-doc (at John Innes Center in Norwich, UK) in polyploid plants. Polyploids are organisms that carry multiple (more than two) chromosome sets which makes meiosis a challenging process. A very good reason to improve our understanding in polyploid plant meiosis is that many of the most economically important crops (potato, wheat, coffee, etc) are polyploids.

My goals are 1) to contribute to understand nature of the genetic factors ensuring that meiosis is faithfully achieved in natural polyploids, and 2) to explore strategies to apply this knowledge into artificially generated polyploids. To undertake these objectives I combine cytological and genetic approaches on the Arabidopsis arenosa and A. thaliana plant models.